"Every Little Thing"

Yester-day, I realized that, provided I've figured them out correctly, the opening guitar phrases in "Every Little Thing" and Buddy Holly's "You've Got Love" have some similarity.  The guitar in "You've Got Love" plays E+G#, F#+A, G#+B, and A+C#, simply ascending and then descending (with the last pair of notes played a couple times in succession).  The guitar phrase in "Every Little Thing" is a bit more complex, but it too is made up of pairs of thirds that ascend and descend diatonically:  A+C#, B+D, C#+E, and D+F# (not in that order).

While Buddy Holly is an acknowledged influence on the Beatles, I think this similarity is more coincidental than intentional.  Still, I thought I'd note it.

"Back in the U.S.S.R."

This morning, I started copying the lyrics in the CD booklet from The Beatles into Google Documents so that I can access them more easily.  I was surprised to find that a line in "Back in the U.S.S.R." is formatted as "Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out."  I'd always understood it as "Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out," but seeing it typed made me realize that it can be understood three different ways:

"Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out" (where "ringing out" is a gerund and "balalaika" [singular] is a possessive noun)

"Let me hear your balalaikas' ringing out" (where "ringing out" is a gerund and "balalaikas" [plural] is a possessive noun)

"Let me hear your balalaikas ringing out" (where "ringing out" is a participle modifying "balalaikas," which is the direct object of "hear")

"Too Much Monkey Business"

Recently, I found a note I'd made about Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" that also applies to the Beatles' version (on Live at the BBC).  Lennon doesn't quite get the words right, but in Berry's original, the lines "Army bunk, army chow / Army clothes, army car" exhibit anaphora, and this repetition illustrates the uniformity or standardization of the military.

"So How Come (No One Loves Me)"

I was thinking about "So How Come (No One Loves Me)" this morning, and I realized that the shape of the melody illustrates a contrast.

The first verse of the Beatles' version is:

They say that ev'ryone

Wants someone

So how come no one

Wants me

There's a contrast even just in the words since "ev'ryone," "someone," and "no one" all rhyme with each other and leave "me" by itself, but this is illustrated in the melody too.  "Ev'ryone," "someone," and "no one" are all sung to higher pitches (B A B, B A G, and B A, respectively), but "me" is sung to a comparatively lower pitch (G).  Musically, then, there's a sense of "me" being apart and excluded.

"Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)"

Yester-day, I was thinking about Del Shannon's "Hats off to Larry."  The first line is "Once I had a pretty girl."  I realized that the first line of "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" is very similar:  "I once had a girl."  According to the liner notes of the Del Shannon compilation album I have, "In 1963 Shannon became the first American to record a cover version of a Beatles song.  He appeared with the group, then still unknown in America, at London's Royal Albert Hall in April of that year and was so impressed by them that he told John Lennon he would cover 'From Me to You' to publicise their cause back in the States."  "Hats off to Larry" is from 1961, so it precedes this event, but I don't know if the Beatles had any familiarity with it, so the similarity of these initial lines may be just coincidental.

"Mother Nature's Son"

Yester-day, the Paul McCartney Lyrics Twitter account tweeted a line from "Mother Nature's Son":  "Sit beside a mountain stream; see her waters rise."  This made me realize that the ascending phrase immediately following this line (E G# B E', played on guitar and doubled by a brass instrument) musically illustrates that "ris[ing]."

"All My Loving"

Yester-day, I learned a bit more of the bass part in "All My Loving," specifically the section during the guitar solo:

The top two lines (especially the first two measures) bear some resemblance to the boogie woogie bass part that seems to have been pretty common in 1950s rock and roll:  arpeggiating chords using the root, third, fifth, sixth, and flatted seventh.  Here, though, McCartney plays the octave instead of the flatted seventh and then reverses the order (octave, sixth, fifth, third, root) for the next arpeggiation.